Debitize Reaches $1 Million Mark, Launches Credit Optimizer

Debitize, a startup helping millennials build credit without using credit (we’ll explain), reached a significant milestone last week and released a new product this week.

The milestone is $1 million “debitized.” Users of the service essentially treat credit cards as if they were debit cards, and pay off balances through Debitize before they can accrue interest, thereby building credit without accumulating debt. Furthermore, the product can be set up to pay bills automatically, since it is linked to a user’s bank account.

The new product is a credit optimizer, which automatically optimizes credit use to help build credit faster. It will be introduced this week at FinCon.

Liran Amrany, Debitize’s CEO, wrote to Bank Innovation about this product:

The 2 largest components of your credit score are payment history (35%) and utilization (30%). Debitize already helps with your payment history by making sure your bills are paid on time, and Credit Optimizer will target your utilization by automating payments to your credit card right before your bank reports it to the credit agencies. Basically we will pay you down to 1% of your credit line so your utilization always looks like it’s 1%. We ran the likely impact through some users with high utilization on Credit Karma’s Credit Simulator tool, and it was an improvement of more than 70 points.

Millennials are well known to be shy of accumulating debt, but avoiding credit altogether can lead to difficulties getting car loans or mortgages down the line. Amrany spent nine years at Morgan Stanley and watched his peers outside financial services struggle to understand financial products and were weighed down with student loans. His solution was Debitize, which helps makes users more aware of their spending today while also building toward their future.

While still in its early days, Debitize has built up an enthusiastic following, which shows clearly on its social media presence:

Sure, I can pay my cc off myself but with @debitize I dont have to keep a running tally on what I need for the bill at the end of the month.

Philip Ryan is Senior Editor of Bank Innovation and Senior Director of INV Fintech. He began covering financial services in 2012 and has more than 15 years' experience in online journalism, which makes him quite old. He can be reached at pryan@royalmedia.com.